I laughed at the Lorax, "You poor stupid guy!
You never can tell what some people will buy."
--Dr. Seuss

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Peter Arno: Roughing It on a Yacht

Reader and contributor David from Manhattan writes about a sketch by Peter Arno done on board ship:

Arno's biographer has seen the attached, but almost no one else, so I thought I'd share it. Back in the 1990s, I was friends with an antiquarian book dealer by the name of James Carr. You might have heard the name. The ultimate packrat, he turned a five story building on the east side into his private warehouse of books, prints, photos, jewelry and many many other things. Tough to get him to part with anything, but I helped him put together consignments for auction. We once got into a discussion about Arno, and he showed me a rough of the artist's that was apparently one page in a guest book for a yacht owned by John Wanamaker, Jr. Carr had long ago chopped up the book and sold the signatures within, but still had the Arno. Long story short, it became a Christmas gift one year after a very successful auction. Not exactly side-splitting, and one suspects Arno promptly forgot about it. [Michael] Maslin thought early 1930s. The watermark on the paper is XXIX, presumably 1929. The book turned up in a garage in Tuxedo Park that was being used for storage. One of the running jokes with Carr is that he swore that somewhere he still had a couple of George Price drawings. He'd vow that this time, he'd find them, but they never surfaced, at least when I was around.

Peter Arno,"Yes—this is our little skiff."

Note: While awaiting my own invitation onto a luxury yacht, I've put together these links for your Arno education.